What has Prime done to my ammonia?

Prime does detoxify ammonia and it also plays hob with standard ammonia tests (both Nessler and salicylate tests).

To test for free ammonia when using Prime, you must get a special ammonia 'badge' sold by Seachem that you leave in the tank.

I don't know about Prime, but Amquel, which also complexes ammonia into a safe form, leaves the ammonia available to nitrifying bacteria.

Prime is a great water conditioner, but its effect on ammonia tests is a bit frustratring...

HTH,
Jim

That locked up ammonia is able to be used for cycling, it just wont harm the fish. As you have no fish, that is sort of useless, but you want be changing any water nor adding any more Prime until you are done with the cycle.

And the free ammonia is there also, for the bacteria.

Now, what I wonder about is whether the nitrite consuming bacteria that hate ammonia and are inhibited by too high ammonia levels are going to be faster to show up and do their thing if the Prime has the ammonia locked up in a non toxic fom.

I use prime in my water and use aquariua pharm. ammonia test and never get any reading in the test other than the minimum because of the chlorimaine in my water. Could the reading be so low due to the plants in my tank?

I use prime in my water and use aquariua pharm. ammonia test and never get any reading in the test other than the minimum because of the chlorimaine in my water. Could the reading be so low due to the plants in my tank?

biofilter and plants

Between the established biofilter and the plants, you should never see any readings of ammonia or nitrite, johnnyxxl. The filter is a back up for the plants. Plants are the first defense against ammonia.

The Prime is unlocking the chloramine and detoxing the ammoniand the chlorine that results. With very large water changes you might see some ammonia on test, if you have the ammonia test that uses only one bottle of reagent. The 2 bottle type should show zero, but if you wait long enough it will show some (apparently, from recent reading) but the zero result is the correct one, as free ammonia should be zero.

In your tank, the fish are producing a lot less ammonia than one adds in a fishless cycle, I think. I don't know, but with a tank full of heavily fed discus babies, I've measured only 0.5ppm ammonia in a day when the biofilter was removed for medication, though there should have been some biofilter left on tank walls and such.

I don't really know why we run a fishless cycle up so high, it seems silly to me... the bacteria are reproducing at top speed if there is any ammonia present at all, even well below our ability to test for it.